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Karen Hussey is Associate Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University (ANU) where she undertakes research on policies, institutions and governance for sustainable development. She leads several projects assessing the effectiveness of Australian laws and policies for supporting adaptation to climate change.

Her presentation at YCEI’s fifth annual conference focused on the implications of electricity generation in a water-scarce environment projected to be impacted by climate change. “The risks posed by climate change are four-fold,” she explains, ranging from water scarcity to increasing ambient temperatures (which decrease capacity for cooling), increasing variability, and secondary impacts of climate change on critical infrastructure. The cumulative impacts, she says, will strongly influence where and how electricity is generated in the future.